Biophysical reaction-diffusion model for stage II retinal waves and bifurcations analysis

Description

Retinal waves are spontaneous waves of spiking activity observed in the retina, during development only,playing a central role in shaping the visual system and retinal circuitry. Understanding how these waves areinitiated and propagate in the retina could enable one to control, guide and predict them in the in vivo adultretina as inducing them is expected to reintroduce some plasticity in the retinal tissue and in the projectionsto the LGN. In this context, we propose a physiologically realistic reaction-diffusion model for the mechanismsof the emergence of stage II cholinergic retinal waves during development. We perform the bifurcation analysiswhen varying two biophysically relevant parameters, the conductances of calcium and potassium g_Ca,g_K respectively. The two main goals of our work are: firstly, reproduce the experimental recordings ofdevelopmental retinal waves by simulating our model and secondly, explore the different dynamical behavioursobserved when varying these two parameters.

Abstract

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